Goran Dragic opens up about how talented but wildly inconsistent Michael Beasley was: "He just told me, 'Today's just not my day to play'"
"Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard." That Kevin Durant quote has been talked about not only in NBA circles but in all walks of life in general. And if there's ever been a player who should be a poster boy for that message, it's Michael Beasley.
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In the league, there are some guys who are head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to talent level, and then there are those who claw and grind their way into a position to compete at the highest level. Beasley? The uber-talented Kansas State product selected No. 2 overall in the 2008 NBA Draft was firmly in the first group.
One of the guys who can absolutely attest to that is Goran Dragic. The Slovenian floor general got a front-row seat to the B-Easy experience during their time together in Miami and Phoenix, and if anyone knows what made Beas so special and so frustrating at times, it's Dragic.
"Michael Beasley is really a good guy, he has his own basketball philosophy, but honestly, he's one of the most talented players I've ever seen," he said. "He can play at the one, two, three, and four positions. Long, left-handed, he can shoot, go right, go left, whatever you need, he can do it."
"The only thing was, when you put him on the court, sometimes he wanted to play, sometimes he didn't… so it was all in his head," The Dragon opened up about his former teammate.
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Beasley had all the tools to become a superstar
A 6-foot-9, 235-pound lefty with a silky shooting touch and tremendous ability, Michael Beasley had a game that would fit like a glove in today's NBA. Long before positionless basketball became the norm, Beasley was built for it.
Just look back at the 2007 high school class — Beasley was the No. 1 ranked prospect, ahead of guys like Derrick Rose, James Harden, and Blake Griffin. The tools were all there: he could shoot, handle, post up, and get a bucket from anywhere.
Beasley's versatility and offensive skill set let him flash his brilliance at every stop. The thing is those were only flashes, which were far and in between his regular production. Because for every night where Beas looked like the best player on the court, there was another where you barely noticed him.
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Heck, even Dragic, who's shared the floor with the cream of the crop in his long career, couldn't help but marvel at Beasley's talent.
"I have one story about him — we were playing in Phoenix, and the man scored 40 points in 25 minutes, and then in the next game, he scored 0 points. I asked him, 'Beas, how is that possible?' And he just told me, 'Today's just not my day to play, I don't know, I'm just not feeling it," the retired guard added a story that perfectly captures the essence of Michael's career. "But when I saw him in practice, nobody could guard him."
Related: Michael Jordan shows off his $115 million luxurious superyacht in Croatia
Instead of success, problems came around
By all the parameters, Beasley had almost everything lined up for a long and successful career in the Association. However, it was anything but. Instead of a rise to stardom, he became more known as a wildly inconsistent guy, and his path became filled with trades, suspensions, and challenges far away from the hardwood.
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However, the real tragedy is not that he didn't become the player he had the capabilities to, but that in the middle of all that turbulence in his career, he got lost in all the noise, with the NBA doing nothing to support him during those darkest moments, despite trying to reach out for help countless times.
"I don't talk to nobody," Beasley said. "I've reached out and I've reached out so much that I have to die with some kind of dignity."
After all that, one can't help but wonder what kind of career B-Eazy would have achieved if only the "stars" had aligned.
Related: Goran Dragic debunks the narrative that Jeremy Lin was overrated during his time with the Rockets: "He was fighting"
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jun 30, 2025, where it first appeared.
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